Subject to Change
Page 21
“Hey, shithead.” I feel bad for a second, like maybe it’s disrespectful to call him shithead.
I edge closer and smooth wrinkles out of the sheet with my fingertips. What would he think if he knew Mom and Dad had been here all day? Mom and Dad? And Kate and Ryan. And me. Me, here, keeping vigil. Me, taking care of him.
There’s a green hospital jug full of water on the bedside table. Who’s it there for? He certainly can’t drink it. I pour some in a little plastic cup. “Fuck, Seamus. This really sucks.” It’s strange to stand beside him and not be nervous about what he’s going to do. It would be just like him to sit up and roar at me right now, bandages and tubes and everything. Just fuckin’ scare the shit outta me and laugh like it’s the biggest joke ever. I’m used to him being my personal terrorist. Not this.
I take a drink of the water. It’s lukewarm and tastes like bleach. This stuff could send you to the hospital.
It freaks me out how still he is. “This is fucking creepy, Seamus.” I let my eyes wander over all the machines and poles and other crap around his bed. There’s barely one part of him that’s not hooked up to something or wired or bandaged. “Does it hurt?” It sure looks like it hurts. “Fuck, Seamus, just fuck!”
I stare at his sleeping face. His blond eyelashes are resting on his cheeks. I know underneath are Dad’s blue eyes. He has pneumonia, Ryan said. I wonder if Seamus got the antibiotics he needed. I can’t believe it was only two days ago. I’m glad I gave him the money. It was the right thing to do for my brother.
“It’s been an interesting week. All in all, the highlight was you…was this.” I toast him with my plastic glass. “You really know how to steal the show.” I drink some more horrible water. As I watch him, everything that’s happened—the police, Dad, Leah, Bubby—seems far away, almost like a dream, only this is the part I want to wake up from.
I don’t want to watch him anymore. I push the curtain to the side on its track and walk over to the window, look out at the dark. A few lights wink back at me, and of course there’s a Tim Horton’s. Why is there always a Tim’s?
I start thinking about Dad and some of the things he said, about starting from scratch—rebooting—and wanting to be part of our lives again, trying to create some sort of family. I’m getting used to the idea of him, of having our dad around. “We did always have one, you know,” I say over my shoulder to Seamus. “Sorry. I was talking about Dad.”
I shake my head and return to the side of the bed. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but he’s cool, Seamus. He’s just a guy. You should see his truck. You’d love his truck.” I start to feel good telling him about this, so I keep going. “Eight cylinders…four-wheel-drive…a fucking monster! He keeps the radio on CHOM, and the names of the songs scroll by in the little window…” I draw the outline of the truck with my hands and get so excited showing him how big and beautiful it is, I almost spill the glass of water. “Seamus, I want you to see that truck. It’s a Chevy Silverado. Not a 1500, not even a 2500—it’s a 3500HD! I’ve been in it twice now. You’ve got to fuckin’ ride in that truck!”
I’m jacked up from adrenaline, and it’s starting to turn to panic inside me. What if he never sees the truck? I’m breathing fast, and it feels like a tornado’s building in my chest. What if he fuckin’ never sees that truck?
We finally have a chance to reboot, or whatever, and he might have ruined it because he and that moron thought they were in a scene from The Fast and the Furious. Oh God, he might die! “What the hell were you thinking? I mean, how are we going to be a family if you—” I lunge at him, look him right in the face, words exploding out of me. “What the hell didya go and do that for? Can you hear me, Seamus? What the hell did you do that for? YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE! FUCK! FUCK!!” I pound the metal railing on the side of the bed with my fist. Plastic tubes, Seamus’s body, the bed—everything jiggles and creaks and shakes.
The sound of my own voice bounces off the walls and brings me back to reality. What the hell am I doing? I straighten up. Seamus is still. I poke my head out to see if anyone heard. But the hall’s deserted and dark and quiet except for the trouble lights buzzing near the stairwell. I tiptoe over to Seamus with my finger on my lips. “Shh—”
“HELLO? HELLO? IS EVERYTHING OKAY?” A mechanical voice blares at me through a little blue speaker above the bed, scaring the shit out of me. I freeze.
“HELLO? IS THERE SOMEONE IN MR. O’REILLY’S ROOM?”
“Uh, sorry. It’s okay. I had something stuck in my throat.” I spy the water jug. “Water—went down the wrong way.”
“ALL RIGHT. PLEASE BUZZ IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.” She sounds like one of those passive-aggressive salespeople who follow you around the store with a smile, afraid you’re going to break something.
“Thank you.” I salute the little blue speaker and flop down in the chair. Air escapes from the stuffing with a hiss. Miraculously, I’m still holding the water glass. Whatever water was left in it I’ve managed to empty all over the room.
I put it back down beside the jug and notice a little plant with purple flowers next to a get-well card. In Mom’s handwriting, it says, Somthing to briten up your days. We all love you, my dear boy. Get better soon. Love, your family XXXXXX OOOOOO. I count the spelling mistakes and the kisses and hugs. She always adds kisses and hugs from the people who should have signed the card. Mom, Kate, Ryan, Mandy, me…Dad. Six hugs, six kisses. I turn the card toward Seamus. “See? Not five.” If he could, he’d make fun of her spelling.
As angry as I am at him, I really just want him to be okay. For Mom, for Dad, for everyone. For me. I know it might take a long time. I don’t care about that. “Everybody’s rootin’ for you, Seamus. Mom and Dad, they love you so much. I don’t know what it would do…just…just be okay, Seamus. Fuck! Just be okay.”
I lean back in the chair and turn the card over and over in my fingers, listen to the machines, watch him until it freaks me out, because I can’t believe it’s him.
When I first got here, when we were all in the room, one of the nurses told us that maybe he can hear us. I wonder if it’s true. If you ask me, the whole idea of him being in there, listening, is creepy. It’s weird talking to a guy in a coma. Half the time I’m expecting him to say something, and half the time it’s like he’s not even here. I wonder if I said anything I shouldn’t have. I’m not much of a talker, but I try to think of something else to say.
“So remember that tutor you were bugging me about before? Yeah, well, now I think she might actually be my girlfriend.” I check for Seamus’s reaction, expecting him to…I don’t know, laugh at me. It’s the first time I’ve said the word girlfriend out loud, and it makes me feel naked. “She’s really cute.”
I glance at the door to make sure we’re alone, then lean in. “Actually, she’s sexy as all hell, and I can’t figure out what she’s doing with me. Get this—she’s an older woman. And smart! And she’s with me! Actually, it hasn’t been a great day for her either. Her grandmother just died, right down the hall.”
Suddenly I feel like a real jerk. Leah went home from the hospital this morning without her bubby, forever. And Seamus, he’s lying in a hospital bed. He may never have a girlfriend, ride in Dad’s truck, see Mandy again, have dinner with the family.
I realize how unbelievably stupid it is to wish someone was dead or, worse, act like they’re dead when they’re not. I admit there were lots of times I wished Seamus would drop off the face of the earth so I could have some peace. We all did it with Dad, pretended he wasn’t there.
“Dad’s not dead, Seamus. And…neither are you. That matters.” I don’t know why everything had to change so much. All the screaming and fighting. It was crazy for sure—unbearable even. But what’s crazier is acting like people are dead, people you’re supposed to love, when they live twenty minutes away.
“Don’t you miss him?” I look at Seamus. What if he can hear me? What if he’s thinking?
“I do.” I understand the difference now between gone and dead. Maybe that sounds stupid, like everyone knows the difference. “If he really was dead, Seamus, there’d be no more chances.
“And I want another chance, with you, with Dad, with all of us.” Why does he have to be just lying there? “We’ve been setting the table for dinner at home now. There’s a place at the table for you.”
I take my pencil stub out of the pocket of my jacket, twist my body around to get a better angle and write I miss you, shithead on his cast. I put the pencil back in my pocket. Through the window it’s gray now, not black. The sun is coming up. Seamus seems peaceful.
I want him back. What if I could get both my dad and my brother back? It’d be like in that Foo Fighters song that was playing is Dad’s truck: Down crooked stairs and sideways glances comes the king of second chances.
Second chances.
Two fingers on his right hand are all I can find that’s not taped or wired or clipped with clothespins or stuck with tubes. I grab them and squeeze as hard as I can. “Please, Seamus, please be okay. You gotta trust me on this. I’ll show you. I need you to get better. We all need another chance.”
Acknowledgments
I often wondered why authors made such a fuss about thanking their editors first. Then I worked with Sarah Harvey. Now I know. This is my first novel. There would be no Subject to Change without her patience, wisdom, encouragement and love of Dave Grohl.
To my mom, Peggy, thank you for making me love stories and for insisting, when I got discouraged, that you have to be tough to be a writer. To my husband, Peter, and our children, Sarah and Eli, thank you for taking this journey with me and providing essential hugs and words of love along the way. This novel is as much yours as it is mine.
A loving thank-you goes to my friends Lina and Kathy—my writing group—for invaluable critiques and being with me from start to finish. Surrounding yourself with excellent writers makes you a better one.
Thank you to the Quebec Writers’ Federation and children’s author Raquel Rivera for initiating me into the editing process through the QWF Mentorship Program. Raquel, you are a jewel. I learned so much from you.
In 2010 I took a course at the QWF, where I met my first mentors, Monique Polak and Lori Weber, and started work on Subject to Change. The first chapter of this novel appears as the short story “Shift” in Salut King Kong (Véhicule Press, 2014), an anthology of short-listed works from the CBC/QWF Quebec Writing Competition.
Thank you also to the Lester B. Pearson School Board for enabling me to take a six-month writing sabbatical. Without organizations like the QWF being supported by grants from the federal and provincial arts councils, and leave options such as sabbaticals, novels would not get written.
I owe a ton of gratitude to the towns of Hudson and Rigaud for providing fertile ground to grow the story. But it is definitely fiction. While some names have remained the same, realities have been changed to indulge fancy and discourage too much direct comparison.
Thank you to my friends and colleagues who allowed me to riff off them as professionals in order to provide rich characterizations of school staff. You know who you are, and I love you.
Thank you to the original Declan for the kernel of inspiration that became Subject to Change. Sadly, you will never know who you are.
Karen Nesbitt holds a Master of Education in counseling and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. She works as a school counselor at the senior campus of Westwood High School and at Horizon High School near Montreal, Quebec, and teaches creative writing at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal. Also the mother of two teenagers, Karen spends most of her days immersed in teen culture and has been writing since she was a teenager herself. She lives with her husband and children in Pierrefonds, Quebec. Subject to Change is Karen’s debut novel.